Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism
Lois Rudnick

The recently released book, “Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism,” looks at an important area of artwork created in northern New Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century. Lois Rudnick, the author and editor of several books, presents biographical material on Cady Wells that offers a multi-dimensional view of his life and work. In addition to a substantial biography of the artist from Rudnick, the book also includes essays from two art historians, Sharyn R. Udall, and Robin Farwell Gavin, who focus on related areas of interest to the artist, namely, modern dance and historic Spanish Colonial works of art.

Raised in a wealthy family on the East Coast, Cady Wells (1904-1954) was an enormously talented man who moved to the Santa Fe area in 1932, ready to pursue the life of an artist. With a background in Japanese brush technique, Wells continued his studies with Andrew Dasburg, who by that time was well established as the leading modernist painter in New Mexico. With watercolor as his primary medium, Wells was driven to express himself, his thoughts and emotions, concerning the world around him. Very much affected by the turmoil of war, raging for much of the mid-century, Wells was “described as the only artist of his generation to get ‘under the skin’ of New Mexico,” according to Rudnick.

Early in his career, Wells was inspired to paint the landscape around him. He soon turned toward non-objective work and ultimately to abstraction--enlarging his textural palette with mixed media. As the author wrote, his “dark, moody, and emotionally compelling paintings acknowledged the state’s tragic past and the nation’s foreboding future, ushered in by the dawn of the Atomic Age at Los Alamos.” Wells was an important figure in the Santa Fe art community and as he learned more about his adopted home, he developed a strong passion for the historical arts of the region. It was his santo collection that became the core collection for the Museum of New Mexico’s Spanish Colonial Art department. However, his interests were diverse and he supported a wide array of artistic endeavors. He was an integral figure in the social circles of both poet Witter Bynner in Santa Fe and Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos. Cady Wells died of a heart attack in New Mexico near the time of his 50th birthday.

The University of New Mexico Art Museum will hold an exhibition of Wells’s watercolor and mixed media works from January 28 to May 22, 2011

The show will travel to the Harwood Art Museum in Taos, where it will be on display from June through August, 2011.

The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, in Santa Fe, is showing Wells’s Santo collection, from January 21 to August 28, 2011.